Safe Now
by DragonBlood-Katana
Summary: Written for Hinata Rare Pair Week 2016 Day 1. Prompt: Phone Call (Wildcard) Hinata isn't used to this sort of phone call.


_Twelve new messages from Kenma? He's never called me this much during practice._

Shouyou's eyebrows furrowed as he checked his phone, shouldering the locker room door open and heading down the stairs. He was used to getting texts and phone calls from his boyfriends during practice; Lev and Kenma were constantly getting yelled at by their captain for sending selfies and random phone calls to Shouyou instead of practicing like they were supposed to be doing. Shouyou found it cute.

But _twelve_ missed calls, all from Kenma? There was a text from Lev, but Shouyou wasn't nearly as worried about that. He held the phone up to his ear, listening to the first message.

 _"H-hey, Shouyou… I know you're in practice, but if you get this before you start, it would be great if you'd skip, just for today. Lev isn't picking up either a-and I need someone really bad right now… please call me when you get this. Please, Shouyou."_

Shouyou lowered the phone from his ear, staring at the screen in horror. He dimly noticed that he had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Kenma had sounded like he was going to start crying in that message.

Shouyou stepped inside a relatively deserted coffee shop and listened to the rest of the messages. Kenma got more and more hysterical and the messages got shorter and shorter the longer Shouyou listened. The last message was simply, _"Shouyou, please. I need you,"_ and then static.

The first thing Shouyou did was call Lev. His other boyfriend needed to know immediately if he didn't already. The two rings it took Lev to pick up was a hellish eternity.

 _"Shouyou!"_ Lev was too cheery to have heard anything from Kenma. He must not have listened to the message Kenma had implied he left Lev in his first call to Shouyou.

"Something's wrong." Shouyou's words were rushed and ran together with panic as he stood outside the coffee shop.

 _"Whatcha mean?"_ Lev sounded worried now, too.

Shouyou was on the verge of tears. "I _mean_ something's wrong. Kenma left me twelve messages during practice and he sounded really, really scared and like he was crying. Lev, we need to find him."

 _"Hey, it's alright. I'm sure he's okay, Shou. Look, call him and then text me where he is when you find out. I'll meet you guys wherever he is, okay? I'll let Kuroo know, too."_

Shouyou nodded and sniffled, scrubbing his forearm across his eyes to try to wipe away his impending tears. "Okay. I'll see you later, then."

 _"Okay. I love you."_ Lev's voice was gentle and uncharacteristically serious.

"I love you, too." Shouyou hung up and called Kenma. It took him longer than it should have because his hands were shaking so bad that he almost dropped his phone trying to hit the _call_ button.

At first, Shouyou thought he was just getting static, and his heart seized in terror. Then he realized that the noise on the other end of the line was Kenma sniffling, trying to get himself together. Shouyou didn't know if that knowledge made the situation better or worse.

"Kenma, sweetheart, what happened? Where are you? I'm sorry I didn't respond sooner; I was in practice and I didn't hear your messages until now and—"

Kenma sniffled again. _"N-no, don't worry… you're here n-now."_

He sounded half like he was trying to convince himself. Shouyou wanted to cry. "Yeah, Kenma. I'm here now. Where are you? I'll come get you."

 _"Th-the park. The one a few blocks from our apartment."_

Shouyou nodded, said a quick "goodbye-I-love-you" and took off running, his bag bouncing against his hip erratically. It took him less than ten minutes to get there, and even when he did it didn't look like Kenma was there.

"Kenma! Kenma, where are you!" Shouyou cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, ignoring the thudding of his heart. Panicking would not help Kenma.

"Shouyou… I'm over here. In the slide." Kenma's voice was soft to begin with, but it was almost inaudible, muffled as it was by the thick plastic.

Shouyou glanced around, counting slides. There were three, but only one of them was as tube slide and Kenma would be visible if he was on one of the other two. Shouyou jogged to the slide and climbed to the top, crouching in front of it nervously. Kenma was barely visible; he was curled up and almost impossible to see in the darkness of the slide.

"Kenma?"

Kenma turned around, blinking owlishly up at Shouyou. Shouyou offered his boyfriend a soft, hopefully reassuring smile and slid down far enough to hug Kenma.

"What happened? Are you okay?"

Kenma shook his head, pressing his face into Shouyou's shoulder. Shouyou reached up to stroke his hand through Kenma's hair, knowing it calmed him down, then froze. Kenma's hair ended just above the tips of his ears in a jagged, rough line. It wasn't a clean cut, meaning that it hadn't been done professionally or willingly. Suddenly, Shouyou understood.

Kenma had always refused to get his hair cut short because having too wide a field of vision caused him too much anxiety for him to handle, no matter how annoying he found having long hair. Shouyou and Lev were fine with that; they knew that Kenma hated his anxiety and felt like a burden to his boyfriends, so they made sure that they did whatever they could to make it a little less debilitating. Someone must've cornered him and cut his hair by force; he had mentioned that he'd been having issues with bullies again. Lev had been ready to go intimidate them but Kenma had insisted that they weren't that big an issue.

They were clearly a relatively big issue.

"Oh, Kenma," Shouyou breathed, pulling Kenma closer. Kenma was shaking, his hands clutching almost desperately at Shouyou's shirt.

"Kenma, sweetie, I have to let Lev know that I found you, okay? He's really worried." Kenma nodded and pulled away just enough for Shouyou to pull his phone out of his back pocket. The glow of the screen nearly blinded Shouyou, though it drew Kenma's eyes like a moth to a flame.

Shouyou sent a quick text to Lev then put his phone away again. Kenma snuggled closer, curling himself into Shouyou's body as much as he physically could. Shouyou held him close, knowing that the physical contact was Kenma's way of calming himself down and reassuring himself that Shouyou wasn't going to leave. He was always especially clingy after anxiety attacks, and those assholes that had cut his hair had sent him head-first into an unusually severe one. Shouyou hated them for it.

Lev showed up later, though Shouyou wasn't sure by how much. He wasn't wearing his watch and his phone was trapped beneath the combined body weight of him and Kenma, so he didn't know how long it took Lev to get to them. A bunch of awkward and semi-painful shuffling around later, Kenma was sandwiched lovingly between Shouyou and Lev, the three of them pressed as close together as was possible in the cramped space. To be honest, it was extremely uncomfortable – especially for Lev, who kept smacking the boniest parts of his long limbs into the side of the slide – but neither Shouyou nor Lev complained. They were too focused on making sure Kenma was as okay as possible to really give a damn if they were comfortable or not.

Shouyou didn't know how long they spent in that slide, but by the time they tumbled out the end of it, the sun was going down. It had been about four in the afternoon when Shouyou had found Kenma, so he assumed that they had been there for two or three hours. That certainly explained why he was so stiff and sore.

When they returned to their shared apartments, the three of them curled up on the bed, again with Kenma in the middle. This time, they spent hours whispering loving, gentle reassurances to Kenma, promising him that they were there for him and that they would be more than willing to help him until his hair grew back out.

 _You're safe,_ they whispered as Kenma fell asleep between them, _you're safe now. We'll protect you. You're safe now. We promise._


End file.
